Placeholder.

Ohai.  I have some really good Formsprings I’m sitting on right now, but until something hatches, I thought I’d check in.

By the way, I really kind of think birth metaphors are kind of gross.  Possibly because I’m terrified of childbirth, which is its own partially-inexplicable phobia that we can save for another time, or never.  It embarrasses me even to hear the word “pregnant” from some people.

Lest this become one of those I-have-such-charming-eccentricities lists that I’m growing less and less fond of, I’ll move on.

I’m skipping class tonight because I’m exhausted.  I knew I’d made the right decision when I called the school’s receptionist to tell her I wasn’t coming and she said, “yeah, you looked sick last night.”  I wasn’t sick.  Just tired.  Same tonight.  It’s looking like I’ll be starting classes full-time come June, so Lord willing, this is a temporary situation that’s coming to a close in the near future.  In the meantime, I’m doing a small amount of exercise and eating my veggies and whatnot to try to make up for the lack of sleep.  It’s not as bad as when I was teaching or anything like that, but it’s definitely reminding me of my age.

My work is still pleasantly mundane, my cat is still happy, and my family is well.  Oh, and my sister’s family is moving to a town an hour and a half away, which is better than the almost three hours I used to have to drive to see Marley, so that’s a definite positive development.  I’m looking forward to spring, and many other things.

And that will have to do it, as the sun’s not even completely down and I’m already contemplating when a respectable bedtime would be.

Holly recommends: American Gothic

If you would like a television show to die after a season or less, I’m your girl.  If I like it enough from the very first episode, it’s dead.  I had a string of these in the 1990s, with notable inclusions that you probably won’t remember, such as VR.5 and the revival of Dark Shadows.  Both of these ended on a cliffhanger, of course, creating black holes of non-closure for my life that will never be resolved.  I fear the same thing is about to happen to Caprica, but I’m trying to be positive. 

Probably the most notable instance of this in my life was the brilliant 1995-1996 show American Gothic. I probably throw the word “brilliant” around too much, but  I really do believe this was a brilliant show, especially in the writing.

Created by Shaun Cassidy (yes, that Shaun Cassidy) and produced by Sam Raimi, American Gothic was, I think, ahead of its time.  I loved it when it was first run when I was a teenager—it was the most intriguing thing I’d probably ever seen on television at that point. 

Southern ghosts are an irresistible subject for me.  When I was little, one of my favorite things was the ghost stories my dad would tell me about his hometown in Alabama.  I’m also inexplicably, unadulteratedly drawn to the macabre, the sinister, and the mysterious.  American Gothic had all of the above in spades.

It also had Gary Cole as the diabolical Sheriff Lucas Buck.  One of my favorite tweeters said on Twitter not too long ago that Gary Cole makes everything he’s in cooler (or better, or something—I’m paraphrasing).  So true.  In this role, he’s smarmy, sardonic, ironically sexy, even witty, and that’s all in one twitch of the eyebrow.  His tongue-in-cheek one-liners are perfect and require no sunglasses removal.

When I found American Gothic on Hulu a few weeks ago, I’m pretty sure my heart literally skipped a beat or two.  I was thrilled, but I actually had some slight reservations—the show had a lot to live up to in my memory.  I mean, to this day, members of my family will still quote the tagline “someone’s at the do-wah” at opportune moments.  I’ve bemoaned its cancellation for a decade and a half.  How could it possibly be as good as I remembered?

It was.  It is.  I watched the first half of the episodes one by one, sometimes going days in between.  By the second half or so, it was just like when I watched it the first time around, only this time I had the luxury of playing them all back-to-back in the Hulu pop-out player on the corner of my screen at work.  I lapped them up.

Yeah, you can tell it was made a while back.  I don’t watch a whole lot of current TV (at least not actually on TV, or on a regular basis), but even I know just how dramatically it has changed, even just in the past few years.  The thing is, though, American Gothic still holds up.  Strangely, though I stand by my earlier statement that it was ahead of its time, I’m not sure exactly what time it would fit in.  I think if it ran today, it would still be something singular, something fascinating.  Something I would watch, hungrily.

The closest thing to an heir of American Gothic, of the few contemporary shows I’ve seen over the past several months, I think, would be True Blood.  Granted, I only saw a couple of episodes, so I don’t know if it’s an accurate appraisal.  Still, while I thought True Blood was well done, it didn’t hook me.  And, it was a little too graphic for me in a few ways. 

American Gothic got a little edgy now and then—even, at some points, making me raise my eyebrows when I considered the original time during which it aired—but it was often surprisingly subtle and nuanced, at least for television, in handling such.  It’s gritty and compelling, yes; it’s also pretty to look at.  I guess I just like my evil stylized.

The question of evil in the series is one I could write several posts about.  I love the whole Mephistopheles-meets-Andy-Griffith character of Sheriff Buck, and how he never/rarely destroys anyone himself; instead, he dispassionately rolls the shiny poison apple into their paths and lets them take their own destruction from there.

I’ve also always been impressed with Lucas Black as Caleb Temple.  He brought a serious complexity to his role as Sheriff Buck’s illegitimate son whom he was trying to bring over to the “dark side.”  That kid was deep.

All that to say, it wasn’t a perfect show.  But…I really do believe it was the perfect show for me, that it was appallingly overlooked, and that it certainly deserved more than it got from the network.  It was, unfortunately, aired with episodes out of order and would go on hiatus at random.  That’s why, if you want to take my advice and watch it, and you should, go here to get the correct episode order and watch accordingly.

So…go do that now.

Feel-good Friday: Lots about BnL edition.

I have a seemingly disproportionate amount of Barenaked Ladies on my blog, I know.   I have a reason, but we’ll get to that.  First, let’s do my FGF selection; I think it’s probably the first BnL I ever heard.  Maybe.  In any case, it resonates with me in several ways, not the least of which is that I’ve moved so many times and I know what it’s like to have some very specific, very poignant memories attached to each place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked them since college.  They were fun and quirky, and something different on the radio to enjoy at intervals.  It’s only in recent times in my life, though, that I’ve found myself counting them among my favorite artists.  I’ve always had a certain level of appreciation for them, as I said—I’ve had a CD of their greatest hits since whenever it came out, but not much more. 

It’s just that somewhere along the way, I started actually hearing their lyrics.  They’re the same lyrics I was hearing ten years ago, yes.  And, ten years ago, I was in college, which is arguably the perfect time to be listening to the Ladies.  I remember hearing, for instance, “Call and Answer” several years ago and thinking how odd phrases like “I’ll be the first to crucify you” sounded in a song with the refrain “If you call, I will answer.”  I didn’t really like it, honestly.  I’d skip that track and find something, well, quirky and fun.

Now, at this very moment in my life, “Call and Answer” means more to me than I could have ever imagined.  (It’s so weird how music does that to you—gives you a glimpse into your own future maturing and emotions.)

And that’s just one example.  There was some serious depth and talent in the songwriting of Ed Robertson and Steven Page, and I think I had to live the past several years the way I did to be able to appreciate it.

Now for the reason I’m writing about them to begin with:  a few days ago, the lovely Megan—who is the biggest BnL fan I know—asked me on Twitter if I’d like to accompany her to see BnL in Louisville.  She didn’t have to twist my arm too hard before I’d snapped up the offer, so in May, we’ll be hitting I-65 together, bound for what is sure to be a whirlwind of music and mayhem.  Speaking of mayhem, Mr. Hogan will be joining us there for the show as well, since he’s from Lou-uh-vul and likes BnL too and whatnot.  It’s gonna be blogtacular!

My only regret is that this is the first time I’ll have seen Barenaked Ladies and that I never got to see them before Steven Page left the band.  I think his voice is irreplacable as far as their lyrics are concerned, but I still think it should be a good time.

Question from Anonymous: “Ryan Adams or The Beatles?”

How you just gonna ask me that?

Well, you probably already know that I’m not just going to pick one.  If this were a Facebook relationship status, it would be “it’s complicated.”

As you also probably already know, this is an apples-and-oranges question for me.  Not that Ryan wasn’t possibly influenced a little, at least indirectly, by the Beatles (I maintain that he channels John Lennon in “Beautiful Sorta“)—everyone was, pretty much—but they’re not exactly musical colleagues.

Thus, it would be beyond absurd to discuss the musical merit of each and somehow come up with a “winner.”  I guess the intent of the question is closer to which is my preference, or which means more to me.

I don’t know.  Weirdly, I don’t listen to either on a regular basis.  Is that shocking?  Let me explain, if I can.  Yes, I have both of their catalogues pretty much memorized.  Yes, I list each of them at the top of the list of…just about every earthly thing that I love the most. 

There’s just this point that a small number of artists reach in my consciousness that I will awkwardly label for the purposes of this post as The Point of Meaning Too Much.  I’ve cried myriad times over myriad songs by both artists.  I have at least one memory attached to each song of each, as well.  Each has given me chills, blown my mind, freaked me out, altered my thinking, widened my eyes, and caused me to shake my head on hundreds, if not thousands, of occasions.

I just can’t handle that kind of thing too often.  I save my iPod spins of each of them for when I get a specific album jones—for instance, sometimes you just need the White Album—or even a specific song jones.  I mean, how would I have ugly-cried my way through a handful of heartaches without “Now That You’re Gone“? 

I’ve years’ worth of evidences of my obsessions with both the Beatles and Ryan Adams.  The former changed everything for me in my adolescence.  The latter changed everything for me in my early 20s.  I’m not willing to part with either.

***

I’m closing in on the questions that have been sitting in my Formspring inbox for weeks!  Ask me more.

Question from Anonymous: “Who were your teachers (if you can remember) in elementary school and state a fact/memory/sentence about each?”

I love this question, only I kind of wonder how old the asker thinks I am.  I do remember each elementary school teacher very specifically, and I have at least a couple of very vivid memories attached to each.

Having been a teacher myself in recent previous lives, I’ve learned over and over just what they went through to help me—some things there would have been no way to have understood had I not gone through them myself.  Having been an adult for a little while, I’ve seen over and over as well just how important the job of a teacher is—how, indeed, we really don’t go a day without using at least some lesson we learned in school—and the job of an elementary teacher is fundamentally so.

It will be hard to stick with just one “fact/memory/sentence” about each of these women—so I probably won’t—but here goes.

Kindergarten—Ms. F—There were two kindergarten teachers, and Ms. F wasn’t the pretty young one that everyone wanted as their teacher.  I’m sure the pretty young one loved her students, but no one could have loved us more than Ms. F did.  No one.  She talked to us like we were intelligent little human beings.  A few years back, I heard she had died of cancer.  I felt a personal loss, though I hadn’t seen her in probably 15-20 years.

1st Grade—Ms. W—Um.  She was a good teacher, I will give her that.  She was also moody and sometimes unfair, especially to those of us she knew outside of school.  She was a member of the congregation where my dad preached, and that did not always bode well for me.

2nd Grade—Ms. H—Also a member of the congregation where my dad preached, but the complete opposite of Ms. W.  Ms. H was actually what you could call a family friend, and as I grew up in that town, she and her husband became sort of my local grandparents.  As a teacher, she too was in the profession out of a deep, true love for kids.  She only had the use of one arm because she had had polio as a child herself, but she did more with that one arm than most of us do with two.

3rd Grade—Ms. P—Again, I got the teacher that year that no one wanted of the two options.  I could not be more pleased that I got her.  She was olllllllld and cranky, and if it weren’t for her, I don’t know if I’d have what little math abilities I have retained.

4th Grade—Ms. H2—She looked (and even kind of acted) like Merryweather the fairy from Sleeping Beauty, only with gray hair.  Also a good teacher, as I recall, but I mainly remember her as acting a lot older and stuffier than she really was—she had a son in the same grade as my little sister, so she couldn’t have been that old.  Perceptions of adults are so distorted when you’re a kid.

5th Grade—Ms. P2—Oh, hey, whaddya know, another lady I knew from church.  (It was a really small town and a really, really small school.)  She was great.  Very strict, very regimented, sometimes disliked, mostly respected.  I miss what she represented.  We don’t have it in schools much anymore.  I’ve seen her a couple of times through the years, and she’s long since retired, but any interaction I’ve had with her as an adult has only confirmed what a classy person she is, in addition to having been an exceptional teacher.

We started changing classes in 6th grade, so I guess that’s when junior high started, though the school was technically a K-8 elementary school.  I’m thankful to have gone through grade school at the time and in the place that I did.

And, because I’m feeling generous and masochistic, I thought I’d give you an illustration for this particular post.  Behold, Holly in her elementary school days.  Not sure how old I am in that picture.  The hand I hold is my little sister’s, who was cuter than me, so she got chopped.  The mismatched bow I wear in my hair only vaguely conceals the fact that I have a near-mullet.  It was before I got glasses, so I’m guessing I’m about 7 here.  Believe it or not, this doesn’t even really qualify for “awkward phase.”  It’s more like “awkward pre-awkward phase.”  There are pictures of the real awkwardness, but I’m…not ready to show you those.

Edit:  I always forget to remind you where these questions are from—visit my Formspring, won’t you?  I’ll answer just about anything, unless it’s dirty or mean.  Or unanswerable (i.e., a tongue twister with a question mark at the end).

Feel-good Friday, in honor of last weekend edition.

I never told you about my concert!  In a word, it was, of course, awesome.  I enjoyed myself even more than I realized I would.  The headliner, Eric Clapton, was just sick.  I mean, if I could make that…sound that he makes with a guitar…well, I’d just sit at home with a guitar and make it all day.  Every single day.  He makes it look effortless.  I loved just letting him transport me for a couple of groovy bluesy hours.  Surprise guest Vince Gill was pretty impressive, too!

I got to hear most of the songs I would have requested.  I had wanted to maybe hear some Cream, though, which he didn’t play.  I don’t know if that’s something he does anymore or not, honestly.  But, in honor of a solidly great show, and in honor of the sunshine (and hope of more sunshine to come) we’re enjoying, I give you the song with the opening riff I would sit and play all day in the aforementioned stay-at-home-with-the-guitar scenario:

Also, ROGER DALTREY.  Wow.  He’s still got almost every bit of his voice, and he’s got a great band backing him too.  Sadly, as opening act, he got less than an hour to play.  I could have listened for well over an hour more.  He played several Who songs, as well as several I’d never heard.

He mentioned that he’d played several pretty momentous concerts with The Who, but that playing the Ryman a while back had been the biggest deal for him.  (I love, so much, how every artist who plays Nashville has a little something extra to say in tribute to our city—I know artists personalize shows to whatever city they’re playing, but it’s just different here, somehow.)  One of the concerts he mentioned was the Concert for New York in the wake of 9/11.

That memory struck at my heart a little.  I remember watching that concert on TV, all drained and scared and just tired, and The Who’s performance of “Baba O’Reilly” was one of the first things I remember actually getting through and letting me know things really could be okay again.  Townsend doing the windmill-guitar thing, Daltrey pumping his fists….it reminded me about rock and roll.  It had been pretty easy to forget that and just about every other passion I had at that point.

Those are some vivid images in my heart, and I will always be grateful for that performance and its needed effect.  And I got to hear Roger Daltrey play it!  Though I must admit it was more odd than I’d have realized to hear him scream “teenage WASTE-land!” I was still thrilled.

Thankful Thursday.

Yes, it’s back, but briefly.  As always, it’s not that I’ve not been thankful all this time, it’s just that I haven’t always made the time to express it.  And, well, I’m thankful for the same things every week pretty much.  A few for today:

1.  Sunshine!  Non-subarctic temperatures!  It’s [insert synonym for 'crisp' since I hate that word] outside right now, but nowhere near what it has been. 

1.a.  And look at the weekend, Nashville!  It’s gonna be plum balmy.

2.  The public library.  I’ve said it a jillion times before:  I think the public library is the best thing civilization has ever come up with. 

2.a.  A job that puts me a couple of blocks away from the beautiful main branch of the Nashville Library.  I’m like a junkie.

3.  Leeann’s garage.  I’ve never lived in a house with a garage before.  It’s the most amazing thing, and I marvel at it every morning.  It was especially great not to have to go out in the crazy weather a few weeks ago during the first couple of chapters of The Situation 2010.  I don’t have to scrape ice off the windshield, and in the summer, I won’t have to get sunburned walking to my car (you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m just that anglo).

4.  My new water bottle.  I invested in a Good Life bottle, which arrived in the mail yesterday.  I’ve become a lot more aware of my body since I started massage school, and one change I’m making is to try to get the right amount of water per day.  It goes beyond the eight-glasses rule, though—according to my instructor (and several other sources, if you want to do some internet research), you should divide your body weight in half, then get that amount of water in ounces per day.  For some of us, that’s a pretty big number.  I’d been using a glass bottle that was originally unsweetened tea, I think, in order to avoid creating the waste and ingesting the toxins of plastic.  The bottle wasn’t big enough, though, and short of creating hash marks, I was losing count of how many trips to the water cooler I was making.  I thought I may as well make an investment in something bigger that would also encourage me to keep it up.

It’s amazing!  It’s shiny and pretty, and you know I like shiny pretty things.  I got the purple because purple and green are my favorite colors, but I wasn’t sure I’d like the green color that was on the website.  It doesn’t have all those drawbacks of plastic.  And, you can go hot or cold with it, and the outside temperature doesn’t change, so your hand doesn’t get cold with condensation or burn up.

Makes me want to fill it with freshly-French-pressed coffee, drive up to a mountain outlook, gaze out at it, and…drink the coffee, I guess?

5.  A blog upon which I can write 2+ paragraphs about a shiny purple bottle, and readers who at least pretend to care.

Lots more, but gotta get back to my job (that I’m still really, really thankful for as well).

Question from Anonymous: “Star Wars or Star Trek?”

This one is a no-brainer for me, then it gets slightly complicated.  And by “complicated,” I mean “mundane and possibly disappointing.”

Star Wars.  No contest.  I don’t get Star Trek, and I never have.  I even remember falling asleep during one of the Star Trek movies my parents took me to the theater to see when I was a kid.  I was usually pretty susceptible to whatever entertainment was going on around me (still am, actually), but Star Trek just never took.

Star Wars, though…well, Star Wars was childhood.  I don’t remember ever being alive without having watched Star Wars.  Pretty sure this was somehow an in utero thing.  I loved it, and I was thrilled when the rereleases came out when I was in high school.  I insisted we be there for every episode on the day it hit the theater.

Then came the prequels.  I think I even liked the first one, or said I did, anyway.  And the second one—was that the one where Yoda gets crazy with the lightsaber?  I liked that part.  It must have been the second one, because I don’t even think I bothered with the third one.  Not saying they were bad…just saying I didn’t care for them.  And I ended up not caring about them.  Which was sad.

What’s sadder is that it made me feel kind of meh about the whole franchise.  I don’t even remember a whole lot about the originals now, and I haven’t watched them in years.  I still have my worn-out set of VHSs, covered over with DVDs, sitting in a crate in Leeann’s living room.  I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them even though my VCR is a relic itself, gathering dust in storage.

It’s not like I was ever obsessed with it—promise—and, in fact, sometimes I forget which movie featured which line or little weird creature.  I still have a cherished pastiche of images and sounds from the films woven into my subconscious, though, much like the same has been permanently woven into my beloved pop culture for decades now.

Some moments stick out, mostly from Episode IV.  I’ve been known to pull out my frantic Leia impression sometimes—I had gotten pretty good at the “look back, then turn back around” part—when imploring someone to help me because they’re my “only hope.”  (Not often, but it’s happened.)  I have more frequently been known to advise someone to “always let the wookiee win.”  I even had a tee shirt that said that at one time.

(Also, two words you don’t want to get me started on? “I know.”)

You really don’t even have to have been a fan of the movies, though, to recognize those quotes.  I never was such a fanatic that I tripped out over details or anything.  Still, Star Wars means a lot to me, and in my world, there’s no contest at all between it and Star Trek.  I can’t even imagine thinking otherwise.  I’d rather be a scruffy nerf-herder.

As such, I leave you with my favorite scene from Fanboys, which beautifully encapsulates the neverending epic battle between Star Wars fans and Trekkies.  (It’s slightly NSFW in a couple of places, and you’ll have to bear with my boyfriend—this was while we were broken up for a while and he’d let himself go.)

***

Use the force and visit my Formspring page.

Weekend update.

I realized I haven’t just sat down and told you about the state of things around these parts, so…here you go:

Job:

I do really like this job, just as much as I did the first time I did it three years ago.  It’s just right for me—they give me some writing to do and then just let me do it.  No phone ringing, no crap to take home, just a job to do at my job.  I wish I could keep it.

Cons:  politicians all around.  Ugh.  And, another picky thing—I share an office with two other people (not the con), and each of our workstations is in a corner with the computer screen (and our respective backs) to the center of the room.  Not that I look at anything untoward on my computer, but I just don’t like people’s seeing whatever is on my screen, regardless of what it is.  I’ve also grown to hate conversations that go on behind me, even when they’re innocuous and don’t concern me (though they are especially annoying when my co-workers get on a roll about some political something or another).  There’s no blocking it, no matter how high I turn up the volume into my earbuds. 

Honestly?  That’s about all the bad I can say, which, compared to my last couple of jobs, is a big deal.  I wish I could keep this job.  It has a lot of pros:  the aforementioned being left alone to write, its location downtown, the ability to study or surf the net or blog during lulls in workload.  I don’t think they’re planning on making the position permanent, though, and I have one co-worker who already seems to be gunning for it if it is, so I doubt I’d have much of a chance anyway.

All in all, though, I’d call it my second favorite job I’ve ever had.  I’ll let you guess which was the first.

School:

Hoo boy.  I just finished my second module of my massage therapy program last night.  It was not what I would call a personal success, I must admit.  I passed the class, thankfully, but the fact that I had at least a little bit of a question was troubling.  It was a module on the nervous system, and I’m sorry, but that stuff is hard.  I’m gaining more and more respect for the medical professionals among us as I’m going along.

The fatigue also officially set in this module.  Simply put, I’m tired of working full-time and going to class for 3+ hours three nights a week.  BUT, I’m also very thankful for this opportunity and don’t want to complain too much.  I think this module was one of the harder ones, and I’m hoping to start fresh next week with module 3.

Life with Leeann:

Leeann is the awesomest roommate I’ve ever had, and I’m not saying that because she holds in her hands the power of whether I have a roof over my head or not.  I also say it knowing it will make her feel awkward, which admittedly makes me giggle.  I also also say it knowing the unfortunate nature of such statements—how they tend to be harbingers of doom to come.

I just know I’m loving living in her house with her dogs and her ginormous TV, upon which we have movie night almost every night.  Neither of us, I think, would have chosen to live with someone else, as we both have misanthropic tendencies, but I think we’re both at points in our pseudo-adulthood wherein it works.  Whatever.  We make each other laugh and leave each other alone and do our best to work out unfortunate animal issues.

Oh, right—animal issues.  Dorian, Charley, and Delgado have been able to forge a tentative peace in the past month of cohabitation.  Sometimes a doggie will take a wild hare and chase Dorian down the hall, or Dorian will hiss at a doggie out of seemingly nowhere, but most of the time they can share a room peacefully.  If Dorian will just stop chewing the plants, my place in the house will be secure.

Overall:

Life is pretty good.

It’s Johnny’s birthday.

I still miss that man.